Tom Felton

Tom Felton in September 2015

Thomas Andrew Felton (born 22 September 1987) is an English actor best known for playing Draco Malfoy in the film adaptations of the Harry Potter fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling.

Quotes

Beyond the Wand (2022)

• An audience can go back and watch a film any number of times they want. It's always there for them. For the cast and crew, the relationship with a film is more complex. The magic is in the making, and that process is a discrete unit of time in the past. You can reflect on that unit of time, you can be proud of it, but you can't revisit it.
  • chapter 4

• [About on-set tutoring:] It's hard to be the class clown in a class of one.
  • chapter 6

• [About acting:] An actor brings something of themselves to a part, working with elements of his or her own life, and fashioning them into something different. I'm not Draco. Draco is not me. But the dividing line is not black and white. It's painted in shades of grey.
  • chapter 9

• [About child visitors to the Harry Potter set:] None of our visitors were that interested in meeting Daniel, Rupert, Emma, or for that matter, me. They wanted to meet the characters. They wanted to put on Harry's glasses, to get a high five from Ron, or a cuddle from Hermione. And since Daniel, Rupert, and Emma were so similar in real life to their idea of the characters, they never disappointed. It was different for us Slytherins. I might have got the role of Draco in part for the similarities between us, but I like to think that I was not so Draco-esque that I'd be unpleasant to a group of nervous excited youngsters. [...] [But] Draco being a nice bloke was as anathema to them as Ron being a dickhead. I didn't quite know how to process it. [...] I'd learn, throughout the years progressed, that some people find it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Between fantasy and reality. Sometimes that can be trying. [...]
• chapter 11

• [...] Certain fans had difficulties distinguishing between Tom, the actor, and Draco, the character. Understandable in five-year-old, but perhaps a little harder to process in someone older. [...] In a way, the tendency some people have to conflate the character and the actor is a compliment. I don't want, in any way, to overstate my contribution to the world of Harry Potter and the effect the phenomenon has had on people's lives. If I hadn't turned up to audition that day, somebody else would have had the part and they would have done it well. The whole project would have been largely the same. But there is some gratification in knowing that my performance crystallized people's notion of the character. Even if it meant they occasionally mistook fantasy for reality.
  • chapter 12

• [About difficulties part of normal life:] They were all parts of the regular rough and tumble of a normal childhood. At the very least, they were not part of the cloistered upbringing I could have easily have had forced upon me. I would have been a very different person if I hadn't been given the opportunity to experience the ups and downs of a normal life alongside the madness of being part of Harry Potter. At is was, I had the best of both worlds.
• chapter 14

• [...] Just because the camera isn't pointing at you, it doesn't mean you don't have to act. In fact, your acting off-camera can sometimes be as important as your acting on-camera. Your reactions, your eye line, and your dialogue are ballast for whoever is on camera at the time.
  • chapter 19

• [About auditioning for parts after Harry Potter:] As a kid, I had auditioned for a hundred different projects before Potter came along. I had grown quite used to being told "no" back then. Now I was going to have to get used to it again.
  • chapter 25

• [About finding work in Los Angeles:] Some doors were open to me. An LA agency accepted me as their client. They took me to lunch at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and took great pride in telling me that this was where the film Pretty Woman had been filmed. I nodded politely but didn't tell them I had never seen Pretty Woman. I felt out of place. A kid from Surrey being wined and dined at one of Hollywood's most exclusive and fashionable spots. Between you and me, I would have preferred a box of chicken nuggets.
  • chapter 25

• [About auditions:] I would like to say it gets easier. Truthfully, it doesn't. But I developed a strange kind of addiction to the process. Before each audition, I would stand outside the room and my nervous brain would try to enumerate all the reasons why I really didn't have to be there. Why I should just walk away. But afterwards, the relief of having done it was like nothing else. No matter how good or bad the audition was, the ecstatic adrenaline rush gave me a unique buzz. I might be back at square one in the acting world, but I was getting a kick out of it.
  • chapter 25

• If you tell a person he's great enough times he'll start to believe it. If you blow enough smoke up someone's arse, sooner or later they will start breathing it in. It's almost inevitable. [...] I acted the way I was treated. For a while it was lots of fun, but only for a while. The gleam soon began to tarnish. I never knew I wanted this kind of life, and as time passed, an uncomfortable truth quietly presented itself to me. I didn't want it. Perhaps it sounds ungrateful, I don't mean it to. I was in a lucky and privileged position, but there was something inauthentic about the life I was leading.
  • chapter 25

• [...] I try to remind myself every day how lucky I am to have my life. A life where love, family, and friendship are at the forefront. It's not lost on me that the importance of these is one of the great lessons of the Harry Potter stories. The realization of this is what makes me a very rich man indeed.
  • Afterword